LAGOS, Nigeria (AFP) – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari announced on Friday that the country’s Twitter ban will be lifted after the social media behemoth meets the government’s criteria.
Nigeria banned Twitter in June, days after the company removed a statement from Buhari’s account, sparking outrage in Africa’s most populous country over freedom of expression.
Nigerian officials justified the ban, claiming that Twitter was being used to spread false information and destabilise the country, particularly by separatists in the southeast.
Buhari’s administration and Twitter have been negotiating a set of terms for lifting the suspension, including taxation, content, and local registration in Nigeria.
“The concerns are being addressed, and I have instructed that the suspension be removed,” Buhari said in a speech commemorating Nigeria’s independence day. “But only if the conditions are satisfied to let our compatriots to continue to use the platform for business and good interactions,” he said.
In a statement, a spokesman for Twitter, located in the United States, stated that talks were continuing to restore operations in Nigeria.
“Discussions with the Nigerian government have been courteous and fruitful, and we expect the service to be restored soon.”
The United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom were among those who joined rights groups in condemning the ban as harmful to freedom of speech on a global scale.
The ban came as a shock to many in Nigeria, where Twitter has served as a platform for activists ranging from the #BringBackOurGirls movement after Boko Haram terrorists abducted over 300 schoolgirls in 2014 to the #EndSARS demonstrations against police brutality last year.
The decision to ban Buhari comes just two days after the site removed a tweet from his own account for breaking its rules.
In a warning to those responsible for current instability in Nigeria’s southeast, he referred to the country’s civil war, which claimed the lives of one million people five decades ago.
Nigeria had claimed that Twitter had neglected to remove violent statements made by a separatist leader whose IPOB organisation is pushing for a separate state for ethnic Igbo people in the southern part of the country.
